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Poetry | March 2014

His Currency

By Cheryl Dumesnil

is magenta tempera paint and sequins
pilfered from the library’s storytime rug.

He slathers backyard rocks with gold
acrylic squeezed from a wrinkled tube,

stacks them on my altar, like the pebbles
the living place on headstones

to communicate about the dead:
She was visited; I was here.

He was here: lain on this now bony chest,
plump plum of a being I pulled

from my open wound. My animal
nose, pressed into his blood-waxed

scalp, breathed in the best answer
to every question I know. Love—
 
I ask him to write the word, in his
untrained script, and I tape it

to the wall above my desk, so when
the bills pile up and the unknown

lurks like a trapdoor switch waiting
to be tripped, I can read it again and

remember again all I have forgotten.

1 reply on “His Currency”

Laurasays:
March 18, 2014 at 3:03 pm

Thank you, thank you for this. “…the best answer to every question I know . .. ” Those of us who share the experience of loss in pregnancy know that amazing, overwhelming feeling of love and joy when we finally meet our sweet, plump plums. As always, you give such wonderful expression to these shared feelings . . . a precious gift.

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